Political leaders prefer to ignore or forget unsettling facts, says philosopher John Gray

As stock markets climb to new highs leaders have decided not to think too much about the fragility of our economic system

No 951 Posted by fw, January 12, 2014

“John Gray reflects on “unknown knowns” – what we know but prefer not to think about, whether it’s the truth about the invasion of Iraq or the failures of the financial system that led to the banking crisis. ‘We humans are sturdy and resilient animals with enormous capacities of creativity and adaptability; but consistently realistic thinking seems to be beyond our powers.’” —Point of View, BBC Radio 4

You can listen to the original 10-minute show on the program’s website, A Point of View, which was first broadcast on January 10, 2014 and repeated on January 12. Alternatively, check the show’s podcast page where it is archived for a year. My transcript of Gray’s presentation follows, with added subheadings.

Unknown Knowns by John Gray, Point of View, BBC Radio 4, January 10, 2014

Are we fooling ourselves to believe that the worst of financial crisis is safely in the past?

We like to think the financial crisis is safely in the past. The events of 2007-2008, when the world’s banking system was on the verge of collapse, seems like once-in-a-century upheaval. And it’s natural to imagine we’ve returned to some kind of normalcy. Disaster has been averted and there may be some signs of recovery in the economy. But have we emerged onto a sunny upland of stability? Or are we fooling ourselves?

History suggests an upheaval on this scale isn’t left behind so easily. Could it be that we know the crisis hasn’t been resolved but prefer not to think about the fact?

We didn’t know it then, but Donald Rumsfeld was setting us up for the Iraq invasion when he distinguished between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. He deceived us all, including himself

Former American Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” has passed into everyday speech. It’s not the things of which we know we’re ignorant that we should worry about, he pointed out it’s the things we’re unaware of not knowing that can really cause trouble. It’s a useful reminder of the vastness of human ignorance.

But might there not be another kind of unknown which Rumsfeld didn’t mention, one that consists of things we choose not to know. Looking back, the purpose of Rumsfeld’s distinction may have been to lay the ground for the invasion of Iraq that followed just over a year later.

Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction were the main justification for the war that we now know he had no such capability at the time of the invasion. He had used chemical weapons in the past in the war with Iran in the ‘80s and later in attacks on the Kurds, for example. But as American-led forces found when they searched to country, any WMD programs that had existed had long since been abandoned.

Even at the time of Rumsfeld’s remark, there were good reasons to doubt Saddam was supplying terrorists with weapons. The fact that Saddam had kept Al-Qaeda out of Iraq was well-known to diplomats, military strategists, and security experts. Possibly this is why, when asked if the links between Saddam and terrorism was an “unknown unknown”, Rumsfeld replied, “I’m not going to say which it is.”

How quickly leaders forget – or simply ignore – the lessons of history. Then there are those who don’t even know what they don’t know – and don’t want to know

Anyone with a little knowledge of history understood that Saddam was unlikely to be in league with Al-Qaeda. But for those who launched the war, the history of the country they were planning to invade was irrelevant. Partly this came from a misplaced sense of invincibility. Many twentieth century wars ended with massively superior forces being obliged to accept defeat. Think of the French in Algeria, or the Americans in Vietnam.

Despite this record, few if any of those who supported the invasion, considered the possibility of a long, drawn-out conflict. They believed that once Saddam’s forces had been defeated the whole country would unit in welcoming the occupiers and setting up an American style democracy.

The remarkable Gertrude Bell could have told Rumsfeld that Iraq could never be democratic – but he would have ignored her anyway

Yet eighty years before the war, the British civil servant who, as much as anyone created the state of Iraq, knew it could never be democratic. Cobbled together from a former province of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, the state was to a large extent the work of a single British official, a remarkable woman, the first to have a senior position in the colonial service, called Gertrude Bell. A fluent speaker of the languages of the region and widely respected by its rulers and peoples, she recognized that because power had been placed in the hands of the Sunni minority, any move to majority rule would mean intense and protracted sectarian warfare, along with the secession of the Kurds.

Bell foresaw the chaos that was bound to ensue if there was ever any attempt at democratic regime change. She wouldn’t have been surprised when the National Museum of Antiquities, which she had founded as a tribute to a civilization she admired, was looted soon after the American-led invasion. Dying in 1926, Bell chose to be buried in the British cemetery in Baghdad, which was also vandalized at the time of the invasion.

The arrogant Rumsfeld brushed off news of looting of Iraq’s treasured antiquities with the comment “Stuff happens.”

When he heard of the looting, Rumsfeld’s only comment was, “Stuff happens.” Insignificant events of this sort, he implied, couldn’t upset the grand plan that laid behind the war.

Rather than confront the facts, Rumsfeld and others simply chose to ignore them, to deceive themselves

Much has been alleged about the disinformation in the run-up to the invasion. But if some of those who launched the war were presenting a distorted picture of the facts, they were also deceiving themselves. Contrary to a common view, it wasn’t that Rumsfeld and his fellow war planners failed to prepare for the situation that would come about in the country after the invasion. If they had known the chaos and conflict that would follow they might not have been able to launch the war. So rather than confront the facts they chose to remain ignorant of them.

Rumsfeld was in an altogether other category of human ignorance – “unknown knowns”

For Rumsfeld and others who thought like him, the risks of the invasion weren’t “unknown unknowns”. They belonged in another category of human ignorance, that of “unknown knowns”, things they decided weren’t worth thinking about. It’s an attitude that hasn’t gone away.

A similar denial of reality prevails today in connection with the financial crisis

A similar denial of reality prevails today in Britain and many other countries in connection with the financial crisis and its aftermath. The bankers and politicians seem genuinely to have believed that a new type of capitalism had been invented in which booms and busts would no longer occur. In the new era we had entered, they were convinced a level of prosperity had been reached that would only increase for the foreseeable future.

Again, anyone with a passing acquaintance with history would have known that this had been believed many times in the past, always mistakenly. Only days before the 1929 stock market crash, one of the best-known economists of the time, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University, announced that stock prices have reached what looked like “a permanently high plateau.” Even after the crash occurred, Fisher insisted it was only a “market correction” that would soon be over. Losing most of his own fortune, the distinguished economist was as deluded as nearly everyone else.

In case you’re wondering who anticipated the crash, two who did were the mobster Al Capone, who described the stock market in the boom years as “a racket”, and Charlie Chaplin, who unsuccessfully pleaded with his friend the songwriter Irving Berlin to sell out the day before the market collapsed.

Once again, our leaders have decided not to think about the fragility of our economic system as they charge full speed ahead to return to business as usual

A great depression of the kind that followed the crash of 1929 has been avoided. But we’ve not returned to anything like stability. Near zero interest rates have led to the near impossibility of saving, along with a bubble in the stock market and house prices. It’s an abnormal state of affairs that can’t last. It wouldn’t take much to trigger another upset. A worsening in the European situation or a faster than expected slowdown in China, for example. But that’s an unnerving prospect, so you’ve decided not to think about it. The acute fragility of our economic system is just one of many factors we all know but have decided not to think about.

Some people suggest that this refusal to think is produced by the system itself. It’s the only way our current economic and political arrangements can keep on going. This may be so, but the resolute avoidance of unsettling facts is a deep-seated human trait. While we live surrounded by “unknown unknowns” we live on the basis of “unknown knowns”, intractable facts that we prefer to forget.

Consistent realistic thinking seems to be beyond our powers

We’d do better to confront these awkward realities and muddle through more intelligently. We humans are sturdy and resilient animals with enormous capacities of creativity and adaptability. But consistently realistic thinking seems to be beyond our powers. This may well be the biggest “unknown known” of them all in an age that prides itself on its advancing knowledge and superior understanding, we’re as anxious as ever to avoid facing up to our actual condition.

John Gray is an English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He is formerly School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to the BBC, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer.

SEE ALSO

Right all along by David Newnham, The Guardian, May 24, 2008 – a review of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), an analysis of the “all-too-human need to justify past actions as driven by something termed “cognitive dissonance” – the state of tension that occurs whenever we hold two ideas, beliefs, opinions that contradict each other. Consider the example that John Gray uses in his talk Unknown Knowns. You support your leader and back his invasion of Iraq, but then you learn that the weapons of mass destruction of which he spoke so persuasively never existed. How then to achieve consonance? Easy. You refuse to accept the absence of WMDs (they’ll turn up – see if they don’t), and when all hope fades, you argue that there were other equally compelling reasons to invade anyway, such as the need to impose democracy and eradicate terrorism.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I claim no ownership of such materials. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing.